The irony is that most of those who downvote didn't spend hours in front of those screens as I did. And I do remember these things were tiring, particularly in the dark. And the worst of all were computer CRT screens, that weren't interlaced (in the mid 90s, before higher refresh frequency started showing up).

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adrianmonk an hour ago | parent [-]

I spent literally thousands of hours staring at those screens. You have it backwards. Interlacing was worse in terms of refresh, not better.

Interlacing is a trick that lets you sacrifice refresh rates to gain greater vertical resolution. The electron beam scans across the screen the same number of times per second either way. With interlacing, it alternates between even and odd rows.

With NTSC, the beam scans across the screen 60 times per second. With NTSC non-interlaced, every pixel will be refreshed 60 times per second. With NTSC interlaced, every pixel will be refreshed 30 times per second since it only gets hit every other time.

And of course the phosphors on the screen glow for a while after the electron beam hits them. It's the same phosphor, so in interlaced mode, because it's getting hit half as often, it will have more time to fade before it's hit again.

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cm2187 an hour ago | parent [-]

You assume that non interlaced computer screens in the mid 90s were 60Hz. I wish they were. I was using Apple displays and those were definitely 30Hz.

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LocalH an hour ago | parent [-]

Which Apple displays were you using that ran at 30Hz? Apple I, II, III, Macintosh series, all ran at 60Hz standard.

Even interlaced displays were still running at 60Hz, just with a half-line offset to fill in the gaps with image.

	▲	cm2187 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I think you are right, I had the LC III and Performa 630 specifically in mind. For some reason I remember they were 30Hz but everthing I find googling it suggest they were 66Hz (both video card and screen refresh). That being said they were horrible on the eyes, and I think I only got comfortable when 100Hz+ CRT screens started being common. It is just that the threshold for comfort is higher than I remember it, which explains why I didn't feel any better in front of a CRT TV.